How we searched the faces as they pa.s.sed!--sensual, cynical, cold faces, faces of utter carelessness, faces full of pride and aloofness. But there were some so different--earnest faces, keen faces, faces sensitive and spiritual. Oh, the pathos of it all! How our hearts went out to these, whose eager wistfulness marked them out as truly religious and sincere! How we longed that they should hear the word, "Come unto Me, and I will give you rest"! They pa.s.sed, men young and old, women and children, and very many widows; and then suddenly two palanquins which had been standing near were carried down to the awning where the idol had been bathed; and before we realised what was happening, they pa.s.sed us. In the first was the disk, the symbol of the G.o.d; in the second, the G.o.d itself.
"We wrestle not against flesh and blood; but against princ.i.p.alities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places"--this was the word that flashed through us then. That small, insignificant, painted, and bejewelled image, in its gaudy little palanquin, was not only that. It was the visible representative of Powers.
We thought of a merry child in our nursery who was dedicated at birth to this particular Power. By some glad chance that little girl was the first to run up to us in welcome upon our return home in the evening. We thought of her with thankfulness which cannot be expressed; but the sorrow of other children bound to this same G.o.d swept over us as we stood gazing after the palanquins, till they became a coloured blur in the shimmering sunshine. There was one such, a bright little child of eight, who was in attendance upon an old blind woman belonging to that Temple. "Yes," she had answered to our distressed questions, "she is my adopted daughter. Should I not have a daughter to wait upon me and succeed me? How can I serve the G.o.d, being blind?" We thought of another, only six, who was to be given to the service "when she was a suitable age." Her parents were half-proud and half-ashamed of their intention; and when they knew we were aware of it, they denied it, and we found it impossible to do anything.
We turned to the people about us. They were laughing and chatting, and the women were showing each other the pretty gla.s.s bangles and necklets they had bought at the fair. Glorious sunshine filled the world, the whole bright scene sparkled with life and colour, and all about us was a "lucid paradise of air." But "only as souls we saw the folk thereunder,"
and our spirit was stirred within us. There is something very solemn in such a scene--something that must be experienced to be understood. The pitiful triviality, the sense of tremendous forces at work among these trivialities; the people, these crowds of people, absorbed in the interests of the moment--and Eternity so near; all this and much more presses hard upon the spirit till one understands the old Hebrew word: "The burden which the prophet did see."
Does this sound intolerant and narrow, as if no good existed outside our own little pale? Surely it is not so. We are not ignorant of the lofty and the n.o.ble contained in the ancient Hindu books; we are not of those who cannot recognise any truth or any beauty unless it is labelled with our label. We know G.o.d has not left Himself without witnesses anywhere.
But we know--for the Spirit of Truth Himself has inspired the description--how desolate is the condition of those who are without Christ. We dare not water down the force of such a description till the words mean practically nothing. We form no hard, presumptuous creed as to how the G.o.d of all the earth will deal with these ma.s.ses of mankind who have missed the knowledge of Him here; we know He will do right.
But we know, with a knowledge which is burnt into us, how very many of the units live who compose these ma.s.ses. We know what they are missing to-day, through not knowing our blessed Saviour as a personal, living Friend; and we know what it means to the thoughtful mind to face an unknown to-morrow.
A Hindu in a town in the northern part of our district lay dying. He knew that death was near, and he was in great distress. His friends tried to comfort him by reminding him of the G.o.ds, and by quoting stanzas from the sacred books; but all in vain. Nothing brought him any comfort, and he cried aloud in his anguish of soul.
Then to one of the watchers came the remembrance of how, as a little lad, he had seen a Christian die. In his desperation at the failure of all attempts to comfort the dying man, he thought of this one little, far-back memory; and though he could hardly dare to hope there would be much help in it, he told it to his friend. The Christian was Ragland, the missionary. He was living in a little house outside the town, when a sudden haemorrhage surprised him, and he had no time to prepare for death. He just threw himself upon his bed, and looking up, exclaimed, "Jesus!" and pa.s.sed in perfect peace. Outside the window was a little Hindu boy, un.o.bserved by any in the house. He had climbed up to the window, and, leaning in, watched all that happened, heard the one word "Jesus," saw the quick and peaceful pa.s.sing; and then slipped away unnoticed.
The dying Hindu listened as his friend described it to him. And this little faint ray was the only ray of comfort that lightened the dark way for him.
Compare that experience with this:--
The missionary to whom this tale was told by the Hindu who had tried to console his dying friend, was himself smitten with dangerous illness, and lay in the dim borderland, unable to think or frame a prayer. Then like the melody of long familiar music, without effort, without strain, came the calming words of the old prayer: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of Thine only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ."
Could any two scenes present a more moving contrast? Could any contrast contain a more persuasive call?
As we went in and out among the crowd, there were many who turned away uninterested; but some listened, and some sat down by the wayside to read aloud, in the sing-song chant of the East, the little booklets or Gospels we gave them. We, who are constantly among these people, feel our need of a fresh touch, as we speak with them and see them day by day. We need renewed compa.s.sions, renewed earnestness. It is easy to grow accustomed to things, easy to get cool. We pray not only for those at home, who as yet are not awake to feel the eloquence and the piteousness of the great "voiceless silence" of these lands, but we pray for ourselves with ever deepening intensity:--
Oh for a love, for a burning love, like the fervent flame of fire!
Oh for a love, for a yearning love, that will never, never tire!
Lord, in my need I appeal unto Thee; Oh, give me my heart"s desire!
CHAPTER VII
How the Children Come
THEY come in many ways through the help of many friends. We have told before[A] how our first two babies came to us through two pastors, one in the north, the other in the south of our district. Since then many Indian pastors and workers, and several warm-hearted Christian apothecaries and nurses in Government service, have become interested; with the result that little children who must otherwise have perished have been saved.
One little babe, who has since become one of our very dearest, was redeemed from Temple life by the wife of a leading pastor, who was wonderfully brought to the very place where the little child was waiting for the arrival of the Temple people. We have seldom known a more definite leading. "I being in the way, the Lord led me," was surely true of that friend that day, and of other Indian sisters who helped her.
Later, when she came to stay with us, she told us about it. "When first I heard of this new work, I was not in sympathy with it. I even talked against it to others. But when I saw that little babe, so innocent and helpless, and so beautiful too, then all my heart went out to it. And now----" Tears filled her eyes. She could not finish her sentence. Nor was there any need; the loving Indian heart had been won.
My mother was with us when this baby came; and she adopted her as her own from the first, and always had the little basket in which the baby slept put by her bedside. When the mosquitoes began to be troublesome, the basket was slipped under her own mosquito net, lest the little pink blossom should be disturbed. But the baby did not thrive at first; and the pink, instead of pa.s.sing into buff, began to fade into something too near ivory for our peace of mind. It was then the friend who had saved the little one came to stay with us; and she proposed taking her and her nurse out to her country village, in hopes of getting a foster-mother for her there. So my mother, the pastor"s wife, the baby, and her nurse, went out to the Good News Village, and stayed in the pastor"s hospitable home. The hope which had drawn them there was not fulfilled; but the memory of that visit is fresh and fragrant. We read of alienation between Indian Christians and missionaries. We are told there cannot be much mutual affection and contact. We often wonder why it should be so, and are glad we know by experience so little of the difficulty, that we cannot understand it. We have found India friendly, and her Christians are our friends. In these matters each can only speak from personal experience. Ours has been happy. There may be unkindness and misunderstanding in India, as in England; but nowhere could there be warmer love, more tender affection.
All sorts of people help us in this work of saving the children. Once it was a convert-schoolboy who saw a widow with a baby in her arms.
Noticing the bright large eyes, and what he described as the "blossoming countenance of the child," he got into conversation with the mother, and learned that she had been greatly tempted by Temple women in the town, who had admired the baby and wanted to get it. "If I give her to them, she will never be a widow," was the allurement there. The bitterness of widowhood had entered into her soul, and poisoned the very mother-love within her; and yet there was something of it left, for she did not want her babe to be a widow. The boy, with the leisureliness of the East, dropped the matter there; and only in a casual fashion, a week or so later, mentioned in a letter that he had seen this pretty child, and that probably, the mother would end in yielding to the temptation to give her to the Temple--"but it may be by the grace of G.o.d that you will be able to save her." We sent at once to try to find the mother; but she had wandered off, and no one knew her home. However, the boy was stirred to prayer, and we prayed here; and a search through towns and villages resulted at last in the mother being traced and the child being saved.
Christian women have helped us. One such, sitting on her verandah after her morning"s work, heard two women in the adjoining verandah discuss the case of a widow who had come from Travancore with a bright little baby-girl, whom she had vowed she would give to one of our largest temples. The Christian woman had heard of the Dohnavur nurseries, and at once she longed to save this little child, but hardly knew how to do it.
She feared to tell the two women she had overheard their conversation, so in the simplicity of her heart she prayed that the widow might be detained and kept from offering her gift till our worker, old Devai, could come; and she wrote to old Devai.
Happily Devai was at home when the letter reached her; otherwise days would have been lost, for her wanderings are many. She went at once, and found the mother most reasonable. Her idea had been to acquire merit for herself, and an a.s.sured future for her child, by giving it to the G.o.ds; but when the matter was opened to her, she was willing to give it to us instead. In her case, as in the other, our natural instinct would have been to try to make some provision by which the mothers could keep their babies; but it would not have been possible. The cruel law of widowhood had begun to do its work in them. The Temple people"s inducements would have proved too much for them. The children would not have been safe.
Once it was a man-servant who saved a lovely child. He heard an aside in the market which put him on the track. The case was very usual. The parents were dead, and the grandmother was in difficulties. For the parents" sake she wanted to keep the dear little babe; but she was old, and had no relatives to whose care she could commit it. Mercifully we were the first to hear about this little one; for even as a baby she was so winning that Temple people would have done much to get her, and the old grandmother would almost certainly have been beguiled into giving her to them. How often it has been so! "She will be brought up carefully according to her caste. All that is beautiful will be hers, jewels and silk raiment." The hook concealed within the shining bait is forgotten.
The old grandmother feels she is doing her best for the child, and the little life pa.s.ses out of her world.
"It is a dear little thing, and the man (its grandfather) seemed really fond of it. He said he would not part with it; but its parents are both dead, and he did not know what might happen to it if he died." This from the letter of a fellow-missionary, who saved the little one and sent her out to us, is descriptive of many. "Not the measure of a rape-seed of sleep does she give me. I have done my best for her since her mother died, but her noise is most vexatious." This was a father"s account of the matter only a week or two ago. "Have you no women relations?" we asked him. "Numerous are my womenfolk, but they are all c.u.mbered with children: how can they help me?"
Given these circ.u.mstances of difficulty, and the strong under-pull of Temple influence--is it wonderful that many an orphaned babe finds her way to the Temple house? For in the South the child of the kind we are seeking to save is never offered to us because there is no other place where she is wanted. Everywhere there are those who are searching for such children; and each little one saved represents a counter-search, and somewhere, earnest prayer. The mystery of our work, as we have said before, is the oftentimes apparent victory of wrong over right. We are silent before it. G.o.d reigns; G.o.d knows. But sometimes the interpositions are such that our hearts are cheered, and we go on in fresh courage and hope.
Among our earliest friends were some of the London Missionary Society workers of South Travancore. One of these friends interested her Biblewomen; and when, one morning, one of these Biblewomen pa.s.sed a woman with a child in her arms on the road leading to a well-known Temple, she was ready to understand the leading, and made friends with the mother. She found that even then she was on her way to a Temple house. A few minutes later and she would not have pa.s.sed her on the road.
There was something to account for this directness of leading. At that time we had our branch nursery at Neyoor, in South Travancore, ten miles from the place where the Biblewoman met the mother. On that same morning, Ponnamal, who was in charge there, felt impelled to go to the upper room to pray for a little child in danger. She remained in prayer till the a.s.surance of the answer was given, and then returned to her work. That evening a bandy drove up to the nursery, and she saw the explanation of the pressure and the answer to the prayer. A little child was lifted out of the bandy, and laid in her arms. She stood with her nurses about her, and together they worshipped G.o.d.
This prayer-pressure has been often our experience when special help is needed to effect the salvation of some little unknown child. It was our Prayer-day, July 6, 1907. Three of us were burdened with a burden that could not be lightened till we met and prayed for a child in peril. We had no knowledge of any special child, though, of course, we knew of many in danger. When we prayed for the many, the impression came the more strongly that we were meant to concentrate upon one. Who, or where, we did not know.
Five days later, a letter reached us from a friend in the Wesleyan Mission, working in a city five hundred miles distant. The letter was written on the 8th:--
"On the morning of the 6th, a woman who knows our Biblewomen well, told them of a little Brahman baby in great danger; so J. and two others went at once and spent the greater part of the morning trying to save the child. It was in the house of a so-called Temple woman, who had adopted it, and she had taken every care of it. For some reason she wanted to go away, and could not take it with her. Two or three women of her own kind were there and wanted it. One had money in her hand for it. But J. had already got the baby into her arms, and reasoned and persuaded until the woman at last consented. They at once brought it here. Had the friendly woman not told J., the baby would now be in the hands of the second Temple woman. I visited the woman afterwards. She had two grown girls in the room with her, the elder such a sweet girl. She told me openly it was all according to custom, and that G.o.d had arranged their lives on those lines, and they could not do otherwise. It is terribly sad, and such houses abound."
Happenings of this sort--if the word "happen" is not irreverent in such a connection--have a curiously quieting effect upon us. We are very happy; but there is a feeling of awe which finds expression in words which, at first reading, may not sound appropriate; but we write for those who will understand:--
Oh, fix Thy chair of grace, that all my powers May also fix their reverence . . .
Scatter, or bind, or bend them all to Thee!
Though elements change and Heaven move, Let not Thy higher court remove, But keep a standing Majesty in me.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] "Overweights of Joy."
CHAPTER VIII
Others
[Ill.u.s.tration: St.u.r.dY AND STOLID, AND LITTLE VEERA
--whose story, however, is different.]
WE have some children who were not in Temple danger, but who could not have grown up good if we had not taken them. "If peril to the soul is of importance," wrote the pastor who sent us two little girls, "then it is important you should take them": so we took them. These little ones were in "peril to the soul," because their nominal Christian mother had, after her husband"s death, married a Hindu, against the rules of her religion and his. The children were under the worst influence; and both were winning little things, who might have drifted anywhere. We have found it impossible to refuse such little ones, even though danger of the Temple kind may not be probable.
Such a child, for example, is the little girl the Moslem is ready to adopt and convert to the faith. Our first redeemed from this captivity (literally slavery under the name of adoption) was a cheerful little person of six, with the st.u.r.dy air the camera caught, and a manner all her own. An American missionary in an adjoining district heard of her and her little sister, and wrote to know if we would take them if he could save them. We could not say No; so he tried, and succeeded in getting the elder child; the little one had been already "adopted," and he could not get her. "The whole affair was the most astonishing thing I have ever seen in India," he wrote when he sent the little girl. The child upon arrival made friends with another, and confided to her in a burst of confidence: "Ah, she was a jewel, my own little sister--not like me, not dark of skin, but "fair" and tender; and the great man in the turban saw her and desired her, and he took her away; and she cried and cried and cried, because she was only such a very little girl."
"The business was being discussed out in the open street"--the writer was another missionary--"the pastor heard of it from a Christian who was pa.s.sing, and saw the cl.u.s.ter of Muhammadans round the mother and her children. It was touch-and-go with the child." These two, St.u.r.dy and Stolid, side by side in the photograph, are in all ways quite unlike the typical Temple child; but the danger from which they were delivered is as real, and perhaps in its way as grave.